empty your cup so that it may be filled

"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson

Life is always fast and dynamic and likes to come at you like a starving rat that smells the hunk of cheese you carry around in your pocket. Why you carry this cheese is anyone's guess but the rats in life always smell it out and get feral upon your approach. Also, a different way to express this sentiment is echoed by another famous fighter.

"Why do individuals depend on thousands of years of propaganda? They may preach 'softness' as the ideal to 'firmness', but when 'what is' hits, what happens? Ideals, principles, the 'what should be' leads to hypocrisy." - Bruce Lee

It isn't just about taking one on the chin. It's about everything. Preconceptions can make for an awkward conversation or they can kill you. If you meet a burly fellow in a back alley and he decides to come at you for that fat stack of cheese in your pocket, what are you going to do? If you meet some fine filly you found online and she turns out to be la Llorona reincarnated, tossing some cheese at her won't do you much good. And who thinks to bring ghost repellent for coffee?

"To see a thing uncolored by one's own personal preferences and desires is to see it in its own pristine simplicity" -Lee

And that's all anyone could ever want. Pristine simplicity sounds so idyllic. It's the ultimate desirable state. If I told you that every night I sleep with pristine simplicity, you'd think I was full of shit because that sounds absurdly restful. We should all aspire for such when we approach life.

"Empty your cup so that it may be filled." -Lee

I've made the mistake my whole life of attempting to form it instead of accepting that it forms me. Life, that is, or rather the living of it and the gaining of experiences is what prepares you for more life. It has nothing to do with what you want. Nature has no desires, it just is. An empty cup is in a state capable of being filled, yet it has no desires or needs to be filled. It exists simply capable of being filled at any moment in preparedness for action when it is needed. To also exist in such a state is to adopt that pristine simplicity into one's self.

Anxiety and worry are the opposite ideas. These happen when your mind and your body don't occupy the same place and time. Your body has no choice but to exist in the present. Your mind is free to wander to the past and the future. To be prepared for the moment, your body and mind must occupy the moment. 

Preparedness is kind of a silly thing to desire, but it's really all you need. It can be pretty tricky to obtain because it needs cultivated. Which is also kind of silly because it's the natural state of humans. Whatever school of evolutionary thought (or not) that you subscribe to, physiologically, humans have certain needs to be in peak physical and mental condition. What separated us from the field of other creatures vying for dominance on this planet was our stamina and intelligence. We were smart enough to track animals and strong enough to outlast them. Humans are among the best endurance creatures on the planet, if not the best. 

That's what made us different from the rest of the creatures when we were first coming up and not much has changed with our physical beings. Our social beings, on the other hand, are surprisingly much the same as well. Though the mediums have changed, we still long for the same things as our ancestors. They used to sit around a fire to cook and eat. We sit around dinner tables or phones or computers. They needed to interact much as we do though the scope was significantly different. Today there's millions or billions within reach on the internet and with media. However, we're still limited to only a handful of meaningful relationships at any time.

Social media is something no one saw coming, but there it is. When we try and stretch ourselves too thin and don't spend the time concentrating on meaningful relationships, it results in loneliness. That's something that can happen even when you're constantly surrounded by people. Then think about the people that spend no time with anyone else in real life and have no meaningful relationships with anyone. It's not the quantity of time you spend with people that matters, it's the quality of time. This is why you can remember things so well from years ago but you struggle to remember something from last week. Of course, if something meaningful happened last week, you'd remember that better but what provides the meaning?

Well, you do. I do. We do. Except, exactly the opposite. By living in the moment and not having preconceptions about the world, you let the meaning come to you. If in your approach to life, you are open and empty, then experience becomes the meaning. It becomes meaningful to you simply because you experienced it, but only because you experienced it without trying to force anything. 

If you go somewhere and you know you're going to have fun. You might. Or something might happen that obstructs your intentions and then shit hits the fan and your preconceptions about the place caused you to have a terrible time instead. If we approach everything with the same openness, then not only do these things have more meaning but they're more fulfilling and engaging and lively. This is just another method of describing life as a verb. However, I wrote about Bruce Lee in another post, you can find that here.